Book Reviews

The Devil To Pay In Oates' 'Accursed' America

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. She has won a National Book Award and three of her novels were nominated for Pulitzer Prizes.

Star BlackHarperCollins

Some months ago, a fellow writer told me that Joyce Carol Oates was writing a vampire book. It turns out there is some truth in this seemingly far-fetched statement, just as there are grains of truth sprinkled throughout The Accursed, a sprawling tale of terrible events afflicting Princeton high society between 1905 and 1906. Oates began drafting the novel in 1984, when she first moved to this best-known of New Jersey college towns and became interested in its history. She put the project aside for many years but returned to it — and completed it — in 2012.

The resulting book is a grand literary pastiche in style and substance, its genre-bending plot pieced together from secret journal entries, newspaper accounts and firsthand recollections. The Accursed follows the story of a young bride, Annabel Slade, who disappears from her own wedding ceremony under mysterious circumstances: Some say she was abducted by a handsome newcomer to the town, others that she went with him willingly. Her brother, Josiah, wonders if there are even darker forces at work, and is determined to find Annabel and return her to the family fold.

Set within the grand houses of Princeton's most distinguished residents and against the storied backdrop of its eponymous university, Oates' novel is populated with fascinating characters, including specters, demons, jilted spouses, likable lunatics (such as the memorable Mrs. Adelaide McLean Burr), novelists and United States presidents (past and future). Oates' atmospheric prose beautifully captures the flavor of gothic fiction, an effect heightened by references to spiritualists like Madame Blavatsky and the darkly erotic Bog Kingdom, a Princetonian netherworld where proper Victorian social and sexual relations have all gone topsy-turvy. And yes, there is even a vampire to be found by readers willing to dig for him.

But don't let the vampire distract you from a more central character in The Accursed: M.W. van Dyck II of Eaglestone Manor, a historian so passionate about the "Crosswicks Curse" and its victims that he can't always distinguish the narrative forest from the trees. With van Dyck, Oates slips from pastiche to parody, for he is a cartoon of a historian, one drawn along bumbling, antiquarian lines. As a result, readers are treated to seemingly irrelevant plot detours and labyrinthine discussions of family trees, real estate transactions and arcane source materials. In one chapter, the dismayed historian cannot help enumerating all that he has had to leave out of his account. In another, van Dyck contemplates the work of the historian (which he sees as the recording, assembling and interpretation of facts), and laments its failure to help him understand what really happened in his hometown of Princeton back in 1905.

One of the reasons our fictional historian remains mystified is that he fails to appreciate what Oates and so many other writers before her have discovered: Vampires and other supernatural beings are useful monsters to think with. These otherworldly creatures illuminate the darkest corners of the human mind and spirit, put flesh and bones on our nightmares, and encourage us to explore issues of difference and deviance. Running like a black thread throughout the many stories in The Accursed are disturbing accounts of racial violence, class warfare, religious prejudice and misogyny. Oates' real monsters are not the rulers of the Bog Kingdom or even the mesmerizing Wallachian count (whom the reader cannot help but compare to Dracula), but the members of Princeton's beau monde, who preach from their pulpits and judge without compassion. The curse that afflicts the town did not begin with the abduction of a young bride on her wedding day, but with the secrets these monsters keep.

The Accursed is, in the end, neither a paranormal romance nor an easy read. With its many digressions and historical asides, it is not a page turner. And it's not a "vampire book" any more than Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a young-adult romance. In Oates' hands, this supernatural tale becomes a meditation on the perils of parochial thinking. It demands we think — with monsters — about our failure to face the darkest truths about ourselves and the choices we've made.

Deborah Harkness is the author of the best-selling A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night, the first two books of her supernatural All Souls trilogy.A professor of history at the University of Southern California, Harkness has published scholarly books on the history of magic and science.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block. You could fill a Florida ceiling bookshelf with the work of Joyce Carol Oates. She's been publishing since the 1960s at a prolific pace, dozens and dozens of books. Her latest novel is "The Accursed," and reviewer Deborah Harkness says it deserves close attention.

DEBORAH HARKNESS, BYLINE: About a year ago I heard a rumor - Joyce Carol Oates is writing a vampire novel. Well, that was only partly true. What she did write is "The Accursed." It's a sprawling book and it's about some terrible things that happen in Princeton, New Jersey, in the early part of the last century. It starts when a young woman disappears from her own wedding. Everyone knows she left with a handsome stranger. But was she kidnapped or did she want to go with him?

This is a high society drama - grand houses, distinguished scholars, the storied university. There's even a vampire if you're willing to dig for him. But don't let him distract you. The central character of "The Accursed" is actually a historian named M.W. Vandyke II. He's a passionate narrator, but he's also a little cartoony. We follow him through plot detours and discussions while he tries to figure out what's happening in Princeton.

He can't see the bigger picture, but we can. The town is cursed but it's not the monsters. It's the upper classes of Princeton, the ones who preach and judge with no compassion. There's some disturbing racial violence in this book, class warfare, religious intolerance. It's a story about the hazards of being narrow-minded. In the end, this book is not a paranormal romance, it's not a page-turner and it's not an easy read.

But if you love stories that peel back the glittering facade of life among the one percent, if you love novels from the early 1900s, then "The Accursed" is probably for you.

BLOCK: "The Accursed" is the latest novel from Joyce Carol Oates. Our reviewer is Deborah Harkness, author of the novel "A Discovery Of Witches." And you can find other reviews and a lot more about books and authors at NPRBooks.org. For the latest updates, you can like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter at NPRBooks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.